Chapter 9: A Grapefruit Sky

Yue Zhishi didn’t actually take everyone’s gossip over the last few days seriously. He was a little gullible and thought it would all pass after a little while. But others clearly thought more about it than he did, as everyone liked to gossip. Even though he kept explaining, after many days, the rumour of “Yue Zhishi was brought aside by Song Yu during physical education class and beat up until his mouth bled” was still running rampant. He couldn’t control it. 

His classmates all started to express their “care” for him in many different ways. Some people gave him snacks and said he must be suffering a lot. Others directly painted Le Le as the modern day Cinderella. 

Yue Zhishi never stopped declaring that Song Yu was a very good older brother, but they all assumed that he simply had a good temper. Even the female classmates who asked him about his views on Song Yu during the school opening ceremony thought so.

“No wonder you didn’t want to answer and would only say good things about Song Yu.” The girl suddenly realised. “I didn’t realise you were so scared of Song Yu.”

Yue Zhishi usually had such a good temper that most people thought he had no bottom line.

But his stubborn, most unbreakable bottom line was Song Yu, and he never allowed anyone to speak the tiniest bit badly of Song Yu in front of him. Song Yu treated him well, and it was an established fact in his heart.

“No, he’s a good person and isn’t like the way you guys think. I’ve said it so many times. He really didn’t hit me, it was all rumours. He treats me especially well.” Yue Zhishi spoke uncharacteristically seriously, tone obviously showing a bit of temper. He even stopped drawing cartoons and said to them, “And also, it’s not right to talk about others behind their backs.”

His classmates were a bit scared by the way he acted. “We’re not talking behind anyone’s back… With the relationship between you two, if we say it in front of you, doesn’t it equal saying it to his face too?”

Yue Zhishi had no way to retort.

A girl then curiously asked, “If he really treats you as well as you say he does, then how come he doesn’t act like an older brother to you at all?”

Another person also said, “That’s right, he looks very nasty.”

“Older brothers generally always spoil their younger siblings.”

“Anyway, I just don’t like his personality. He doesn’t have a sunny personality at all, even though he does look decent.”

Yue Zhishi couldn’t be bothered arguing with them. Song Yu said before, arguing pointlessly can make people look very stupid. He lowered his head and looked at the small figure he just drew. It didn’t look right no matter how he looked at it, so he used his pencil and scribbled all over it.

Jiang Yufan was carrying a clean mop into the classroom as he called out, “Le Le, someone’s outside looking for you.” He came inside and said to the classmates still discussing, “Are you guys bored yet. If you put the same amount of effort into studying as you did into gossiping, you guys would test into Peiya’s high school department in a second.”

Yue Zhishi looked over at the window. He could only see half of someone’s body, but it was a very tall body and was wearing the white shirt from the high school department. Yue Zhishi was suddenly a bit excited and quickly ran outside.

The smile on his face froze once he went out.

“You’re too obviously disappointed. Don’t look around, it’s just me,” Qin Yan teased.

Yue Zhishi weakly greeted this senior. He was actually very disappointed, so he fluttered his eyelids and purposefully asked, “Senior, you shouldn’t be here to ask me to confess to gege on your behalf, right?”

Qin Yan laughed loudly. “I can’t decide who’s funnier between the two of you.” He gave Yue Zhishi’s shoulder a pat. “I’ll stop teasing you. I wanted to speak to you about something serious.”

You’re not a proper person to begin with, what kind of serious thing can you have, Yue Zhishi thought.

Male classmates were all loudly horsing around in the corridor. There were too many people around, so Qin Yan brought Yue Zhishi to the stairs.

“After last semester’s high school senior graduated, our school broadcasting station has been missing an English speaking announcer.” Qin Yan’s voice was very nice to listen to, and he was the current stationmaster of the school’s broadcasting station. There wasn’t a lot of time, so he quickly told Yue Zhishi of his wish for him to join them. 

“You speak very well. You enunciated your words really nicely the last few times you attended the English poetry recital contest, and a few of your female seniors recommended you. What do you think? Would you like to try?”

Yue Zhishi leaned against the wall and lightly tapped the back of his head against it. His answer had no relation to the question. “Song Yu gege also speaks very well.”

“Him? Do you think I can actually get that Buddha to help me?” Qin Yan’s expression clearly said: you think too highly of me, my little friend. “Besides, the broadcasting station needs more junior high school students to join anyway. We broadcast your segment only once a week on Fridays. We might take away a bit of your eating time, but it’ll only be about half an hour.” He started quipping again, “English can be considered as half your native language anyway.”

He only used it up until he was four years old… even that could be considered as his native language?

Honestly, working at the broadcasting station wasn’t quite appropriate for a junior high student in his third year. Yue Zhishi was temporarily lost in thought.

Qin Yan was Song Yu’s good friend, and he’d often come over to their house for dinner ever since junior high. In Yue Zhishi’s heart, helping Qin Yan was the same as helping his gege. He agreed right before the class bell rang.

Once he got home that night, Yue Zhishi was telling Lin Rong all about it, but she mainly focused on how he wouldn’t have time to eat dinner and wanted to deliver food to him. Yue Zhishi couldn’t help but remember the lunchbox bigger than his head that one time in elementary school, leading  his classmates to all stare greedily at his fancy lunch. He shook his head and refused, saying, “It’s too troublesome, no need to deliver some food. I’ll just find some time to eat when I can.”

Their orange house cat slowly walked past him, and Yue Zhishi touched its tail. “Right, Orange?”

This hurt Lin Rong’s feelings, as it made her think Le Le didn’t need her anymore now that he was grown up. Her overflowing motherly love had no way to express itself. She pulled Orange into her arms, but it lightly jumped out and turned around to display its butt at them. It proudly and elegantly stood in the middle of the coffee table.

“Why don’t you ask Xiao Yu if he wants to bring dinner?” Song Jin squeezed his broken-hearted wife’s hand.

Song Yu had just finished showering and was drying his damp hair as he walked out of the bathroom when he heard his father call his name. He had no idea what was going on and just looked at the three people in the living room. 

Lin Rong stretched out a leg and rested it on top of Song Jin’s. “I don’t want to make dinner for him, it’s too hard. He can go find food himself.”

Father Song couldn’t help but laugh, “Sure enough, only Le Le is your child.”

Song Yu turned around to go upstairs, a towel lying on his head. “A bunch of drama queens.”

Qin Yan brought Yue Zhishi to observe the broadcasting station on Wednesday. The work was a lot simpler than he’d thought, and his partner was a high school senior sister in her second year. Seeing that Yue Zhishi needed to start preparing for his high school entrance examination, the senior sister was responsible for all of the script writing, and Yue Zhishi only needed to read the script ahead of time and prepare.

Yue Zhishi was a bit nervous the first day of broadcasting. In order to prepare for this live broadcast, he’d practiced in the bathroom the night before for a very long time, worried that he’d do something wrong. Once the bell rang and ended the afternoon’s last class, he flew to the clock tower.

“Relax.” The senior sister patted his shoulder. “We’ll start the show together, and then you’ll introduce the upcoming song by yourself. Then all you have to do is play the song.”

Yue Zhishi solemnly nodded. “I understand.”

After class ended, Song Yu was called out by a teacher and ended up talking for a while. He didn’t have a chance to return back to the classroom before Qin Yan dragged him away.

“What did Old Wang call you for? He blabbered for so long,” Qin Yan said.

“He wanted me to help him with something.”

“He’s currently in charge of a junior school class, what’s the point in getting you to help? It’s not like you’ll get paid. I’m going to die from hunger, hopefully the cafeteria has some pearl meatballs tonight.” Qin Yan tugged Song Yu through the open corridor and happened to see some boys downstairs in the garden. They were holding up another classmate to play a game of Happy Corner.

“Hey! Are you guys not eating?” Qin Yan leaned against the railing and yelled down at the boys.

“How boring.” 

“Who are you talking about?” Qin Yan chuckled. “Are they boring or am I? Speak clearly, don’t be passive aggressive.”

Music started coming out of the speaker in the garden downstairs, the melody lightly flowing into the bustling school campus. Seeing that Song Yu didn’t respond, Qin Yan started to deliberately provoke him. “You have the right to remain silent, but anything you say can be used against you in court.”

This guy really was hard to deal with.

The music faded away, and someone’s voice came out of the speaker, speaking fluent English. The pronunciation and tone were filled with gentle youth. “Good afternoon, my name is Joy.”

Song Yu was pushing away the Qin Yan who was clinging onto him. “You’re most boring” was about to fall from his lips, but he suddenly stopped when he heard that voice.

“Welcome to our weekly Friday segment, The Sound of English. To start off the show, let’s play a really catchy English song…”

Song Yu didn’t move at all from where he stood. Qin Yan knocked his shoulder against him. “Hey, what’s up?” He waved a hand in front of his face. “System crashed?”

Song Yu knocked away his hand and glanced at Qin Yan. “You pulled him in?”

“Yeah.” Qin Yan shrugged and openly admitted it. “Le Le’s voice sounds really nice. I’ve said it before, I wanted to steal him under my command before starting the graduation handover. What do you think? Not bad, right?”

Song Yu walked down the stairs by himself. “He’s in third year already.”

“Just this semester.” Qin Yan chattered away, “Look at how worried you are. Everyone else is saying you’re bullying the poor child. What’s the point in showing only me how much you care? You also need to let the public know.”

Once they left the staircase, the view of the campus broadened. The sky on top of the sports ground looked like it was soaked with grapefruit juice, and the sun was softly orange as it hung next to the clock tower. The students on the sports ground held each other by the hand, talking and running around, their laughter melting into the song as it started playing. 

The first time live host must have forgotten to mute his microphone. He was more absorbed into the song than everyone else and even softly sang the last phrase together with the chorus.

In the noisy, cheerful campus, everyone was busy enjoying their own precious leisure time. This small mistake passed by without making a single ripple, but it made waves in one person’s heart.

“My youth is yours.”

Song Yu stopped walking and looked at the clock tower, acting as if he didn’t care at all.